The Duchess of Cambridge has disclosed plans to follow in the footsteps of
Diana, Princess of Wales by carrying out a mercy mission to famine-hit
countries in Africa.

During a visit to a Unicef depot in Copenhagen today, the Duchess told an aid worker she intends to visit Kenya “soon”, where she would see for herself the scale of the humanitarian crisis in East Africa.

A royal source confirmed that the Prince and Kate Middleton were “considering” a visit to the region to further boost Unicef’s efforts to raise money to help the 13 million people affected by the crisis.

The Princess of Wales proved the power of royal patronage by drawing the world’s attention to a famine in Zimbabwe in 1993 when she visited a Red Cross feeding station and served food to starving children.

The Duke and Duchess’s visit to Unicef’s worldwide aid distribution centre in Copenhagen was the first overseas charity visit they have undertaken since their marriage, and only their second working trip abroad as a couple.

The Duchess helped Unicef worker Isaac Maina to pack boxes of aid supplies ready to be shipped to Nairobi.

Related Articles

Mr Maina, 40, who is from Kenya, said: “The Duchess told me they are going back to Kenya soon.”

A royal source told The Daily Telegraph: “A visit to Africa is certainly something the couple are considering. It may be some time before they could fit it into their schedule, but it certainly isn’t being ruled out.”

One possibility is that the couple could fly to Africa next June, after the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee weekend, when the Duke is expected to compete in the Safaricom Marathon on the Lewa Downs in Kenya to raise money for the Tusk Trust, of which he is Patron.

It was in a lodge on the Lewa estate that the Duchess accepted the Duke’s marriage proposal just over a year ago.

Since then the region’s crops have failed for the second successive season in the worst drought for 50 years. The resulting famine has put 320,000 children at imminent risk of starvation in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and Djibouti.

The Duke and Duchess were given a first-hand account of the worsening crisis in East Africa by the Crown Princess of Denmark, who has just returned from the famine zone.

The Crown Princess, who is often said to bear a striking resemblance to the Duchess, has much in common with her, as she was also a commoner before her marriage and is seen as the youthful future of one of Europe’s oldest royal families.

Born Mary Donaldson, the 39-year-old Crown Princess, who has four children, is an Australian who met Crown Prince Frederik in a pub during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The Duke and Duchess arranged the visit to the Unicef depot at short notice after becoming “very troubled” by the famine and “deeply moved” by reports of the disaster.

During a briefing on the crisis, the two royal couples were invited to taste tubes of high-protein peanut paste which are sent to Africa, and while the Duke and his Danish hosts tried some, the Duchess declined, before whispering into her husband’s ear.

Wearing a burgundy woollen coat by LK Bennett and brown suede boots, the Duchess was later introduced to the actor Sir Roger Moore, who is a Unicef ambassador, and donors at a reception in the centre.

David Bull, executive director of Unicef UK, has just returned from East Africa, where he said the situation is “desperate”.

He said: “The severe drought, rising food prices and the conflict in Somalia have made a perfect storm for the people living there, in particular for the children who are the most vulnerable.

“I met families who had walked for 20 or 30 days to get hundreds of miles from their homes to refugee camps.”

“Some children are making the same journey unaccompanied, usually because their families have died along the way. It’s absolutely tragic.

“I met one child who was nine or ten years old who had been discovered by another family walking on the road 200km from the refugee centre, all alone. The family had taken the little girl along with them but she was so traumatised we didn’t find out what had happened to her parents.

“Hundreds of thousands of children are going to die if nothing is done, yet this has really gone out of the media’s eye.

“The visit of the Duke and Duchess is absolutely vital and we are enormously grateful for their concern.”

UNICEF needs to raise $40m this year and another $400m next year.

Mr Bull said: “The Duke and Duchess have given us an opportunity to gain worldwide publicity for the story of what’s happening in East Africa and I can’t imagine a more powerful way of bringing this back into the public eye.”

Before the visit to the UNICEF centre, the Duke and Duchess paid a private visit to the Crown Prince and Crown Princess at their residence in the Frederik VIII Palace.

Later, they were due to watch emergency supplies being loaded onto a Nairobi-bound aircraft at Copenhagen Airport, loaned to UNICEF by British Airways.